Fulfilment — SharkLegs (Edinburgh Fringe)
Monday 19/08/2019
Fulfilment
SharkLegs
Underbelly — Cowgate (Belly Laugh)
Prices: £11; Concession: £9
Article: “12 top shows with a social impact to see at the Edinburgh Fringe”. In the list: Fulfilment, a puppet show that had caught my eye in the brochure with its interesting cardboard visual and apparent strong engagement. That’s how I knew, before even seeing it, that this production was going to be one of my Fringe favourites. So… Come in, everyone! Take a seat, make yourself comfortable and meet Robox, Alexa’s newest version, which can bring you everything you want as fast as you wish! Robox can even anticipate your needs and make suggestions to improve your comfort based on what you previously ordered. Completely personalized!
SharkLegs brings to us a very immersive show, in which the audience is the main focus of attention. The performance is indeed different every day as it is based on audiences’ direct desires. Robox comes to you and asks you questions to personalize the experience as much as possible! You even have a piece of paper and pen to start the experience (when you manage to put it in the collection box when needed). And, in the beginning, it is impossible to not like Robox: he introduces himself as very caring and appears as entertaining as funny. Most of all, he engages with us on the assumption that his job is to make us feel comfortable, “fulfilled” and taken care of. We get attached to him very quickly as he shows a lot of kindness and dedication. I have to say that I got particularly impressed with the quality of the puppetry at work here: Robox is an extremely flexible cardboard puppet that can be stretched and squeezed in all senses. He was animated by 3 puppeteers at the same time and was nonetheless so… alive. Exceptionally vivid, completely reactive and fluid in his movements. Also, when you know that the show is partly improvised, there can only be full admiration and respect for the way he was so incredibly brought to life in front of us. I should underline that I absolutely loved the voice, as well as the setting finalization gesture combined to the “sound effect”.
Based on true stories of people employed at Amazon’s main warehouse, Fulfilment depicts, in parallel, the journey of different employees from the recruitment procedure to their day-to-day work environment. There’s therefore, at first, a huge contrast between Robox’s appealing interventions and the disruptive narrative about what a work day at Amazon looks like. But the more Robox gets under the impression of knowing you better, the more he believes that you’re missing objects you had not even thought of… And your comfort is never optimal to him since there’s always something else that could enhance your quality of life. This never-ending loop of consumerism is reflected in the highest humanly possible work pace required from Amazon’s teams to keep up with the company’s objectives, meaning (among other things) no talk to other employees, no pee break, no unions. The pace hence gets more and more intense on stage as Robox suggests more and more life-changing items to us until that point where it is almost impossible to hear what the actress is saying when she moves to get the next object. I have to admit that it might have been a bit too fast for me and I couldn’t really catch a word at that moment. However, this incredible choreography makes the audience literally go through the nightmare these employees live every day so that customers, just like us, can be satisfied on time. What is particularly interesting (and very relevant, I must add) is the way SharkLegs uses the puppet to create a living metaphor of Amazon: Robox suggests something to an audience member and one of the puppeteers has to go to get it while someone else has to come replace the missing puppeteer to keep animating Robox and once the first person is back, someone else has to go get the next delivery item… The puppet is not the humans’ object here but it makes you feel like the humans are literally enslaved by the puppet to keep making it work. It creates a universe on stage where humans are behaving like robots while the robot gets his life from the humans. It therefore flips the puppet/puppeteer paradigm and presents it under a new light… Which shows how a person can simply be replaced by another one in this process without making any difference. Besides, at the end of the show, Robox that we slowly learn to dislike, fires the main employee we were following to “best fulfil” the audience’s desires. He is not just representing Amazon… He is Amazon.
Fulfilment is, in conclusion, a poignant and engaging show that uses puppetry and verbatim to deliver a thought-provoking, socially eloquent piece. At the end of the show, the message can’t be clearer. You leave the house and the hashtag #BoycottAmazon is written in big letters on the door. I personally believe that we need more puppetry with strong messages like this one. Especially when I read a comment on the Fringe’s website saying that someone actually deleted their Amazon account after seeing the show.
RATure
